Chapter 2: Lab Accessing the Command Line
Marko Shaffer
Information Technology, Franklin University
ITEC 200: Linux Fundamentals
Professor Kagan Ulucay
5/28/2023
Red Hat System Administration I 8.2
Chapter 2 - Lab Accessing the Command Line
Performance Checklist:
In this lab, you will use the Bash shell to execute commands.
Outcomes:
ï‚· Successfully run simple programs using the Bash shell command line.
ï‚· Execute commands used to identify file types and display parts of text files.
ï‚· Practice using some Bash command history "shortcuts" to more efficiently repeat commands or parts of
commands.
Log in to the workstation as username student using student as the password.
Franklin VM:
Standard User Account:
The Student's Root Account:
Username
kiosk
student
root
Password
redhat
student
redhat
On the workstation, run the lab cli-review start script to set up a clean lab environment. The script also copies
the zcat file to the student's home directory.
[student@workstation ~]$ lab cli-review start
1. Use the date command to display the current time and date.
2. Display the current time in 12-hour clock time (for example, 11:42:11 AM). Hint: The format string that
displays that output is %r.
Use the +%r argument with the date command to display the current time in 12-hour clock time.
3. What kind of file is /home/student/zcat? Is it readable by humans?
Use the file command to determine its file type.
4. Use the wc command and Bash shortcuts to display the size of zcat.
The wc command can be used to display the number of lines, words, and bytes in the zcat script. Instead
of retyping the file name, use the Bash history shortcut Esc+. (the keys Esc and . pressed at the same
time) to reuse the argument from the previous command.
5. Display the first 10 lines of zcat.
The head command displays the beginning of the file. Try using the Esc+. shortcut again.
6. Display the last 10 lines of the zcat file.
Use the tail command to display the last 10 lines of the zcat file.
7. Repeat the previous command exactly with three or fewer keystrokes.
Repeat the previous command exactly. Either press the UpArrow key once to scroll back through the
command history one command and then press Enter (uses two keystrokes), or enter the shortcut
command !! and then press Enter (uses three keystrokes) to run the most recent command in the
command history . (Try both.)
8. Repeat the previous command, but use the -n 20 option to display the last 20 lines in the file. Use
command-line editing to accomplish this with a minimal number of keystrokes.
UpArrow displays the previous command. Ctrl+A makes the cursor jump to the beginning of the
line. Ctrl+RightArrow jumps to the next word, then add the -n 20 option and hit Enter to execute the
command.
9. Use the shell history to run the date +%r command again.
Use the history command to display the list of previous commands and to identify the
specific date command to be executed. Use !number to run the command, where number is the
command number to use from the output of the history command.
Note that your shell history may be different from the following example. Determine the command
number to use based on the output of your own history command.
Evaluation
On workstation, run the lab cli-review grade script to confirm success on this exercise.
[student@workstation ~]$ lab cli-review grade
Finish
On workstation, run the lab cli-review finish script to complete the lab.
[student@workstation ~]$ lab cli-review finish
This concludes the lab.
